Tag Archive: Marvel’s Jessica Jones

It’s time for borg‘s annual look at 2018’s Best Kick-Ass Genre Heroines in film and television. This year we selected 24 characters that rose to the top. Again the studios gave us more to cheer about than ever. We’re highlighting the very best from a slate of fantastic heroines, with characteristics to learn from and cheer on. Determined, decisive, loyal, brave, smart, fierce, strong (and, okay, sometimes evil), you’ll find no one here timid or weepy, but all rely on their individual skills to beat the odds and overcome any obstacle that comes their way. Over the years we have expanded the list to include any tough, savvy, gritty character played by a woman, so villains are welcome here, too. Some may be frazzled, put-upon, war-weary, or human, but all have fought, some against difficult circumstances, others against personal demons (literally, figuratively, or both), and some against gun and laser fire. And they all showed what a tough, kick-ass character is about.

In 2018 these characters broke new ground, and unlike last year’s great list, this year’s selections would not have worked as well had the characters been swapped for males. We had a former MI-5 agent, bounty hunters, assassins, doctors, defenders, advanced superhumans, superheroines, warriors, witches, and even a few cyborgs–with a roster evenly split between television and movie characters.

Better yet, here’s something we haven’t said before. Several of our selections this year were played by women over 50.

These are the Best Kick-Ass Genre Heroines of 2018:

Enfys Nest(Solo: A Star Wars Story). For the first half of Solo: A Star Wars Story, Enfys Nest was the leader of a band of pirates, a character as cool and ruthless as anyone Han Solo ever faced. But once she took off her mask, it became clear how important she was, how significant her mission was–even more so than Han Solo’s own pursuit of mere wealth. She foreshadowed what Han would later find with Leia, an early glimpse at a rogue and scoundrel who actually had some good in him. When they joined forces, it made their characters even better. And she became one of the best warriors in the Star Wars universe since the original trilogy. (Disney/Lucasfilm)

Okoye(Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War). Is there any woman warrior as powerful and impressive in a fantasy movie this year as Danai Gurira’s Okoye? We can’t think of any. A smart commander, a brave soldier, a loyal ally. Stalwart, devoted, steadfast, strong physically, intimidating and wise, with a keen unwavering ferocity, she represented the best of Wakanda, and fought bravely to defend the world at the last stand against Thanos. (Disney/Marvel)

Higgins(Magnum PI). Few television characters are as beloved as Jonathan Higgins in the original Magnum, p.i. So it was going to be risky having any actor step into the role John Hillerman made famous. So when the show honored the original character and late actor with such a finely tuned, updated character and actor, we took notice. Perdita Weeks’s Juliet Higgins is everything Robin Masters was–the character we all thought Higgins was in secret. We don’t know whether we’ll learn the truth this time around and what that truth will be, but as an ex-British secret service agent, she’s a James Bond for Thomas Magnum to partner with–literally running alongside the show’s star and fighting and shooting her way as an equal. And the result? Every episode of the first season was full of great action and fun. (CBS)Continue reading →

In three weeks we’ll see the return of Danny Rand to Netflix, continuing the ongoing Marvel television universe we last saw in this summer’s excellent sophomore season of Marvel’s Luke Cage. Finn Jones’s martial arts master and corporate exec Danny Rand–the Immortal Iron Fist–returns in season two of Marvel’s Iron Fist and Netflix just released its first trailer for the season, providing a glimpse at what fans of the Marvel franchise can expect. More action is takeaway No. 1.

The first season of Marvel’s Iron Fist was a bit rough after a dark season of Daredevil, a spectacular first season of Jessica Jones, and a knockout first season of Luke Cage. Compared to the other series it approached its origin character with a slowly building story, with co-lead Colleen Wing, played by Jessica Henwick, carrying most of the emotional and dramatic excitement through the season. A heavily corporate boardroom plot with siblings Joy and Ward Meachum (played by Jessica Stroup and Tom Pelphrey) didn’t help matters. Not even the inclusion of genre-favorite David Wenham (The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) could lift the ho-hum plot. And the parallels in Iron Fist and CW’s Arrow were plentiful starting with the similarity of the leads. Marvel’s The Defenders then brought together Rand, Cage, Jones, and Daredevil’s Matt Murdock, but when the characters even acknowledged they didn’t want to be a team that projected to viewers a team-up that wasn’t quite ready.

So can Iron Fist re-engage this season? Star Trek and Men in Black III’s Alice Eve appears briefly in the trailer as supervillain Typhoid Mary. Mike Colter and Finn Jones’ brief team-up as the classic Power Man and Iron Fist hinted at something fans would love to see much more of. Although we don’t see Colter in this first trailer we do see Simone Missick’s Misty Knight will at least return for an episode–something to look forward to. Fans of G.I. Joe won’t be able to resist comparing the conflict between that series’ Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow to Danny Rand and this season’s rival Davos aka Steel Serpent, played by the returning Sacha Dhawan.

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two and a half years since we first met Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones in Marvel’s television universe. Although we saw her as just one of the many super-powered characters packed into Marvel’s The Defenders last year, despite all she’s been through not much has changed with the private investigator. That same angry, tough, bitter, and unhappy anti-hero is the same person we meet at the beginning and at the end of the second season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones, now appearing on Netflix. For fans of the fringe of the Marvel superhero world where little fun is to be had, Ritter’s gritty heroine stands alongside The Punisher (our favorite superhero series last year). Yet despite its heavy dramatic component, it’s very much a superhero show, providing a complete picture of the downside of possessing superhero powers created by chemicals in a lab–a key fact of life for so many Marvel creations, including The Hulk, Deadpool, Luke Cage, the Fantastic Four, the Winter Soldier, etc. For those viewers that thought Jessica Jones’s first season was the best TV had to offer, good luck comparing which is best after watching the second season.

But it’s not really Jessica who shines in Season 2 as much as the supporting characters, and the series doesn’t really reach its stride until Episode 7. The real standout for Season 2 is a new super-powered character created by the same mad scientists that created Jessica Jones, actor Janet McTeer’s new complex antagonist Alisa. Alisa is a driven, unstoppable human machine attached to a fantastic, layered core. Alisa is older and wiser and far more powerful than Jessica or anyone else we’ve seen from the Netflix Marvel realm. Two scenes with Alisa playing the piano really reveal what viewers are in for (and the cast of characters is up against). Unfortunately for Alisa and everyone that she touches, she’s been pushed to the extremes, resulting in a decisively volatile foe. As with Marvel’s Killmonger in this season’s big screen movie Black Panther, calling Alisa the villain of the show omits much about the character. A cold-blooded killer? Sure. But even the worst can still have hope for redemption, especially if what made them bad in the first place was never their fault. Or can it?

Right along with Alisa, Jessica’s step-sister Trish “Patsy” Walker–Jessica’s rather bland supporter and confidante in Season 1–really leaps into action in a breakaway performance that aims toward Linda Hamilton’s tough-as-nails heroine in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Credit the acting range required of actor Rachael Taylor this time around and a stellar character arc created for her by the writing team of Melissa Rosenberg, Jack Kenny, Aïda Mashaka Croal, Gabe Fonseca, Lisa Randolph, Jamie King, Raelle Tucker, Hillie Hicks, Jr., Jenny Klein, and Jesse Harris. Viewers may want to strangle Trish by the halfway mark in the season, but just wait–she only gets in deeper as the series progresses.

Straight from her stint last year as a member of the motley band of vigilantes in the Netflix series Marvel’s The Defenders, Krysten Ritter is bringing her brooding heroine back this week for Season 2 of Marvel’s Jessica Jones. Netflix just released 13 new posters to advertise the show, each created by a woman with a design specific to each episode, featuring directing and writing credits, the episode title, and a hint at the subject of the episode. Most feature vintage pulp novel style cover art. But don’t look too close–a few may tell you more than you want to know before you watch all 13 episodes this weekend.

Like the recent series of variants created by several artists for the first issue of Archie Comics’ Betty & Veronica and Josie and the Pussycats comic book series, the posters provide an opportunity for several creators to attack one subject from different viewpoints. These projects showcase the artists, and fans, in turn, are rewarded by being able to find new inspiration in each impression of the character–and select their own favorites.

So which is your favorite? Can you identify the logo styles or art influences that inspired each cover? If you read our reviews of pulp crime novels here at borg.com, you’ll have no problem identifying the poster for Episode 213.

That week is here–All the lead-in built up by Marvel’s host of television series created for Netflix finally comes together this weekend. Marvel’s Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist become The Defenders. Netflix has released a final trailer leading up to the series premiere.

We’ve learned in the past few years that combining your A-league superheroes doesn’t guarantee a successful cinematic experience. How much better than the theatrical Avengers and Justice Leaguers was the B-league team that comprised the Guardians of the Galaxy? How about the strange success in Deadpool of partnering Colossus, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and Deadpool?

So far we’ve loved most of what we’ve seen Marvel put together for Netflix. Luke Cage earned several of our “Best of Television” categories last year here at borg.com. The core of its new team-up of all the Netflix Marvel superhero stories is a classic Marvel comic book team-up: Power Man and Iron Fist. It’s amazing that this team-up has the potential to gain some real traction 40 years later. And you can’t get much more nostalgic for 1970s comic books than the late, great Steve Gerber run on The Defenders. So put together Luke “Power Man” Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, and add in Elodie Yung as Elektra, and give us a villain played by sci-fi queen Sigourney Weaver, and a supporting cast including the incomparable Scott Glenn, and a triple threat of actresses known for their badass roles: Rosario Dawson, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Simone Missick? What’s not to like? We asked it earlier with the first previews for the series: Can The Defenders be the best team-up on-screen yet?

Everyone keeps trying to stage the best team-up. And we’re all for it. Who is the best? That depends on what you like in a team-up. Marvel’s Avengers? Marvel’s X-Men? DC’s Legends of Tomorrow? DC’s Justice League? DC’s Justice League Dark? What about a smaller group, like, say, made of only two superheroes? Think back to DC Comics’ The Brave and the Bold, bringing together monthly a duet of every A-league and B-league hero you can think of.

We’ve learned in the past few years that combining your A-league superheroes doesn’t guarantee a successful cinematic experience. How much better than the theatrical Avengers and Justice Leaguers was the B-league team that comprised the Guardians of the Galaxy? How about the strange success of partnering Colossus, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and Deadpool?

So far we’ve loved most of what we’ve seen Marvel put together for Netflix. Luke Cage earned several of our “Best of Television” categories last year here at borg.com. The core of its new team-up of all the Netflix Marvel superhero stories, is a classic Marvel comic book team-up: Power Man and Iron Fist. It’s amazing that this team-up has the potential to gain some real traction 40 years later. And you can’t get much more nostalgic for 1970s comic books than the late, great Steve Gerber run on The Defenders. So put together Luke “Power Man” Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, and add in Elektra, and give us a villain played by Sigourney Weaver, and a supporting cast including Scott Glenn, Rosario Dawson, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Simone Missick? What’s not to like? Can The Defenders be the best team-up on the screen yet?

In comic books featuring decades old characters, years of monthly stories stack up, build up to allow characters to get fleshed out, defining plots ironed out and redone until they are synonymous with the characters, and those stories sculpt characters and worlds that fans feel they know very well. Well enough to defend the characters if a modern adaptation doesn’t get it quite right. Although Marvel Studios adaptations have done well at the movies, its television shows haven’t measured up so well. Until now. The Netflix series Marvel’s Luke Cage is full of so many elements that make it a quality series you can expect it to be a contender at next year’s Emmy Awards. And the successful 13-episode Season One of the famous Power Man of Marvel Comics’ past is readying us for the next Marvel series, featuring Luke Cage’s martial arts partner Iron Fist. We’re previewing the first trailer for Marvel’s Iron Fist here at borg.com below.

Marvel’s Luke Cage succeeds in two unique ways. First, Luke Cage is completely loyal to its 1970s origin. Carl Lucas, played by Mike Colter (reprising the role he began in Marvel’s Jessica Jones), is a man from Harlem, imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. A very Stan Lee-style, comic book experiment gone bad much like that found in the origins of The Incredible Hulk, Spider-man, and Deadpool results in Carl gaining incredible physical strength, cellular changes in organs that allow his skin to deflect bullets, and rapid body repairing, all thanks to a mad scientist named Dr. Noah Burstein (played in the series by Michael Kostroff). Lucas escapes and changes his name to Luke Cage. Key characters from the comic books fill in the blanks of his life, including Dr. Claire Temple (a role reprised from the other Netflix Marvel series by Rosario Dawson), Reva Connors (Parisa Fitz-Henley), Misty Knight (played brilliantly by Simone Missick), nemesis Stryker (Erik LaRay Harvey), and a mobster named Shades (played by Theo Rossi). The story hails from the Blaxploitation era, with Cage similar in cool toughness to Richard Roundtree’s John Shaft, and female characters that could all have been portrayed by Pam Grier if this were a contemporary adaptation.

The other indicator of success for this adaptation is the ability to update the story to today, for today’s viewers, and to make the story timely. Set in a New York City neighborhood with a gritty tale like Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (with Harlem swapped for Bedford Stuyvesant), the rough-and-tumble Harlem of the series encounters the same class warfare, the same friction between police and minorities, and the same political corruption that is, as once professed by the original Law and Order series, “ripped from the headlines.” Luke Cage is a mix of plenty of good genre moments we’ve seen before, yet, thanks to the likeable and believable series star Mike Colter, it succeeds on its own merits. It is at once a mix of the M. Night Shyamalan hooded superhero played by Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, and yet its first season follows a modern mobster-based story much like that of Fox’s current DC Comics-inspired television series Gotham. And it all starts with that local barber shop we see in so many inner-city-based stories-unlike the typical superhero story the hero is not trying to save the world, he’s trying to save his neighborhood.

Luke Cage is dark, darker than other Marvel properties, just as it was when the comic book first appeared. This New York City is not a sparkly comic book Metropolis or even a Batman-grim Gotham City. It was rough like real life is rough. And where this adaptation could otherwise land in the PG-13 realm since it lacks the volley of F-bombs from most pay channel series, because of some nudity, Deadpool-level violence, and prevalence of the N-word in street talk, this is one for the adult audience. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some great fun here, to be found in the viewers’ empathy for this anti-hero/vigilante as he takes his lumps and their subsequent cheers as he “gains justice” from those who wrong both him and those he cares about. The throwbacks to the original are also quite fun, throwbacks like those used in the G.I. Joe movies, like Cage’s tagline profanity replacement “Sweet Christmas,” a phrase Colter gets exactly right and somehow makes work completely in 2016, plus references to his “Power Man” comic book title as well as his “hero for hire” tagline, and in one scene he disparages his outfit when he finds himself in one of his comic book era outfits. Woven into the series are Easter eggs to listen for, including many indirect cross-references to Netflix’s previous Marvel series Daredevil and Jessica Jones that are relevant to this story. This adaptation of a 1970s comic book series reveals the producers can stick to the original elements and still make this story relevant in 2016.

Netflix debuted the first season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones last Friday, November 20, 2015, in the same one-hour (roughly), thirteen-episode format as many of its other hit series including House of Cards and Marvel’s Daredevil. The fourth official Marvel Cinematic Universe property to hit the small screen in live-action format since the success of the first Marvel’s The Avengers movie in 2012, Jessica Jones takes the edgy, sexy, delightfully menacing feeling of Daredevil and adds in more edge, more sex, and more menace.

And the result is more awesome.

FYI, from now on, we’re going to drop the “Marvel’s …” in front of every-friggin-thing because: A) Even Matt Murdock could see the heat from the Marvel logo coming off of a flat screen, and B) We get it, we even agree, Marvel has done a fantastic job with its properties these last several years, but even us ardent fans of all things Marvel are starting to get sick of seeing that red-and-white logo plastered in front of every-friggin-thing.

Whereas the well-written Daredevil series focused on a heroic figure trying to overcome the odds and clean up the streets in the neighborhood where he grew up, Jessica Jones is almost a character out of a bad crime novel. She’s a borderline alcoholic private dick who huddles in alleys and hangs from fire escapes to get dirty pictures for the seedy, pitiful clients she gets from the law firm full of sharks she contracts out to. She lives in a run-down apartment which barely doubles as her office, she turns to the bottle when she can’t sleep and then goes out late at night, not to fight crime but to take more pictures of people at their worst so she can make more money to buy more booze.

At this point you might be asking: Where are the super powers? Where are the super villains? What is this show?

Netflix just released the first full-length trailer for its new series, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, based on one of the more obscure Marvel Comics characters–and it looks pretty grim. Veronica Mars’s Krysten Ritter has the title role, and so far this looks like a knock-off except this heroine detective has superpowers. Several other genre actors in supporting cast roles co-star in the series, including Doctor Who’s David Tennant (Kilgrave), The Matrix’s Carrie-Anne Moss (Harper), Men in Black 3’s Mike Colter (Luke Cage), Transformers’ Rachael Taylor (Trish Walker), and True Detective’s Erin Moriarty (Hope).

The Netflix original series is the second of four Marvel series, Marvel’s Daredevil launched earlier this year, plus Marvel’s Luke Cage and Marvel’s Iron Fist are on the way, leading up to Marvel’s The Defenders, all to be released only on Netflix. Behind Marvel’s Jessica Jones are creators of the Twilight movies, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Elementary.

Here is the first full-length trailer for Marvel’s Jessica Jones, showing that despite the teaser released earlier, there’s apparently not a lot of humor in the series:

The first teaser has been released for the new Netflix series, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, based on one of the more obscure Marvel Comics characters. That’s right, in the Renaissance of superhero shows, Jessica Jones beat Wonder Woman to get her own television series. Veronica Mars’s Krysten Ritter has the title role. Alone, that makes it worth giving the series a try, but several other genre actors in supporting cast roles will give us even more to look forward to. This includes Doctor Who’s David Tennant (Kilgrave), The Matrix’s Carrie-Anne Moss (Harper), Men in Black 3’s Mike Colter (Luke Cage), Transformers’ Rachael Taylor (Trish Walker), and True Detective’s Erin Moriarty (Hope).

The Netflix original series is the second of four Marvel series, Marvel’s Daredevil launched earlier this year, plus Marvel’s Luke Cage and Marvel’s Iron Fist are on the way, leading up to Marvel’s The Defenders, all to be released only on Netflix. Behind Marvel’s Jessica Jones are creators of the Twilight movies, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Elementary.

Here are two teaser trailers for Marvel’s Jessica Jones, one a mood piece and the other a brief hint at the nature of humor in the series: